Instant Pot Kacchi Lamb Dum Biryani

Instant Pot Kacchi Lamb Dum Biryani. Tender morsels of lamb, marinated and cooked with the rice. Get the authentic taste of lamb biryani with half the work and no packaged spices! This is an easy recipe where the lamb and rice cook together in the Instant Pot or pressure cooker to give you a one-step, authentic lamb biryani that will rival any you’d had at a restaurant.

I feel confident in telling you that this Instant Pot Kacchi Lamb Dum Biryani, using only fresh ingredients, is restaurant-style and quality. Normally this is not a compliment in my eyes, but restaurants actually do a better job of lamb biryani than most of us do at home.

This homemade, unashamedly full-bodied, well-spiced Lamb Biryani has now negated my need to go out to get my favorite dish. Dum biryani takes forever to make. I mean, forever.

It’s also a long multi-step process that despite my love for biryani, I’m not able to even contemplate. So I made this simple but very flavorful Instant Pot Chicken Biryani, and it’s equally yummy low-carb cousin, the Low Carb Chicken biryani, but people repeatedly asked me for a Lamb Biryani version.

The problem is that lamb takes a lot longer than rice to cook, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to do this.

It’s taken me a while but I’ve finally figured it out, and this Instant Pot Lamb Dum Biryani is the delicious result of my cogitations. Be warned this is indeed a longer list of ingredients than I typically advocate, but I assure you it is utterly worth it.

Before we start a quick Hindi lesson so you understand what you’re making. Kacchi = raw. Dum = cooked slowly with steam.Making kacchi biryani is considered an art form because you’re essentially putting raw meat at the bottom, rice on top and hoping like heck nothing burns as you cook it all together. There are elaborate machinations people go through to make this work.

Or you know, use an Instant Pot and follow this recipe.

It’s important to cut as much of the fat off the lamb as you can. I didn’t do that as well as I should have, and you can see some grease at the bottom. TBH a good biryani should be a bit greasy but still. Do your best without going overboard.

But I mean, look at that biryani!

The Recipe Steps for the Instant Pot Kacchi Lamb Biryani are:

Rinse rice and set it aside to soften

Marinate the lamb

Cook the onions in the oven

Layer lamb and rice, cook 6 mins HP and do a FULL natural release (see notes about Dum = cooking with steam).

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4.18 from 41 votes

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Instant Pot Kacchi Lamb Dum Biryani

Prep Time

20mins

Cook Time

15mins

Total Time

35mins

Instant Pot Kacchi Lamb Dum Biryani. Tender morsels of lamb, marinated and cooked at the same time as the rice to create this otherwise painstaking dish. Authentic taste with half the work!

If you follow the order in which I list steps, this will come together efficiently. So first rinse the rice and set it aside. This rinse will allow the rice to soften a bit and absorb some water.

Into a bowl, pour all the ingredients for the marinade, along with the lamb.

Let the lamb marinate for 30 minutes, while the rice rests. This is a good time to get the onions for the garnish together.

Turn your oven to broil. Line a baking pan with foil.

Thinly slice your onions and break apart the slices with your fingers. Lay these on the foil covered pan, add salt and the oil, and mix well.

Broil these onions for about 15 minutes stirring only once or twice. Traditionally this is done in a pan on the stove, but it's quite a painstaking process. This method is largely hands-off and works well.

By this time, your lamb has probably marinated and you're ready to put it all together.

In the inner liner of your instant pot, spread the marinated lamb, yogurt and spice mixture to cover the bottom.

Carefully spread the rice all over the meat in a uniform layer.

Pour in the 1 cup of water and gently push down the rice until it's submerged under water. Do not mix the lamb and the rice together.

Cook at High Pressure for 6 minutes and allow it to fully release pressure naturally. This part is important, here is where we are approximating the "dum" (steam cooking) part of the Dum Biryani.

Open and garnish with 1/2 cup chopped cilantro and the browned onions.

I am excited to find this recipe this morning, and will definitely give it a try. Would you mind me telling if 1 cup would mean the US standard 250 ml cup or is it the pressure cooker’s 160 ml cup? I would think its 250ml, however would like to clarify it with you.